Roleplaying
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: Written as a fic swap with deadcellredux to write one another's OTP. Prompt word was "discolor." Takes place when Celes wakes up in the World of Ruin. First FFVI fic. Celes/Locke  sort of .


Okay, so my good friend deadcell and I decided to do a bit a writing exercise/drabble swap, and write each other's OTP for the hell of it. She knows Reno/Rude about as well as I know Locke/Celes; in other words, we both played the game and remember it vaguely, and talk to each other wildly about characterization, but the actual game play is a tad...fuzzy. So...we're on even ground here. She wrote a wicked hot Reno/Rude fetish hair pulling scene that made me cream myself. So, when she posts it, I'm going to link to it. The prompt we both wrote was the word "discolor."

Anyway, this is the first FFVI fic I've written. The game was awesome, but I just never had the urge to write fic for it. I wrote this listening to Dark World from the FFVI OST on repeat for like, an hour (once again, thank you Nobuo Uematsu). The music is the first thing you hear when Celes wakes up in the World of Ruin, which is the exact moment when this fic takes place.

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><p><strong>Roleplaying<strong>

The wind blows everywhere on the island, and she wonders if it's colder beyond the sea, the only thing she can see for miles in every direction. A year means nothing when asleep; in this new world, it means the same when awake.

Everything smells of stale salt, and rotten fish, and eventually of rotten body, and then she can't tell the difference any more. Her fingers tingle for something cold to keep the stench at bay, but even with magic, she knows she couldn't cage it. She knows now that the heavy scent of metal and steam which she eventually came to resent is better than the smell of rot.

The soil here is rocky, and as she clambers up the steep incline with bare feet, she wonders whether her blood has grown clear over the year she was away. She wonders if blood exists in this world any longer, a place where the sky is always gray, the rocks are sharp, and even the crash of immense water seems too small to matter. The last island she was on told her these things; she hadn't listened hard enough, even though in the final stand, she had acted with honor.

That doesn't seem to matter quite as much now though as she climbs, higher, toward the sky, and just for a moment she thinks that maybe, by going down she'll be able to go up.

Celes has never been a sadist, has never been one to enjoy or inflict suffering, and drowning is an activity best left up to the mad or the desperate. And even now, in this strange, new spoiled apple of a world, with all of its terrible smells, she won't inflict it on herself.

She's almost at the top, and she swears that she hears voices on the wind, cast from far off places, maybe her memories, the ones she actually has. The ones after magic. Of faces, of voices, of warm skin and familiar features and little pockets in her heart that retain her humanity, if only for a few beats of a year.

She ties her hair back, because she's not going to die like a wanton woman full of sorrow. After all, she's not Maria, even though she played the part; even though she hears singing in the wind, and for a moment when she closes her eyes (a dignified execution always requires a blindfold), the song in her ears is close.

Death is supposed to be humane, at least by her hand, but Celes is convinced that every bone in her body is broken when she wakes up, mitered and steeped in salt water; her hair has come undone, and it is a line of seaweed floating in shallow water, pulled gently back and forth in the tug of a tide that never seems to recede.

She lies still, wondering if maybe this is hell. She's killed a lot of people, and although she's always considered herself a just person, perhaps she got out of the Gestahlian Empire a little too late to be worthy of any mercy; this is the price of power, however briefly seized, and however long lamented.

Her legs still work and her body lifts, instinct taking over as she pulls herself out of the mire of sand and stones and cold water. The wind has quieted; everything is still except for the ever-present sting to her eyes of putrid stink.

As she looks amongst clouds and water, all one gray expanse like the present state of the world, the sky is suddenly aflutter with a white swoop. A bird arcs downward like a beacon, an unsettling omen.

In the past, Celes has pontificated to her troops about the value of making one's own path, of determining one's own destiny; she has no troops now, and in the world she woke up to, she has no desire to try and convince herself, even as the harbinger of life lands with a faded, painful memory clasped around its body.

To save a bird is a silly thing, like hesitating to kill a mouse as it pokes its head out of a hole, looking for food as is its nature. It can't be blamed for its indiscretions, its existence and need to flourish, and the diseases it brings to the robust. Celes knows all too well that eating is a crippling thing, especially for the starving. But she takes the bandana anyway.

She can see the stain of blood sunk so deep into the fabric that it hasn't faded, not yet, probably from the bird whose wing has almost healed. She looks into its glassy eyes, and it simply looks back; the discolored cloth is still warm from his wings and fervent travel to this island.

She's too tired to move anymore, and she watches as the bird simply stays where it is, its bright white feathers shining in the dim light. It settles into the sand, and tucks its head back into a wing; even in the wind, it doesn't look cold.

The bandana smells like blood and salt; she empties her mind and flees her identity to press it to her face, and the scent suffocates her in a different way than the rushes of death and strange ocean. It surrounds her, and as she closes her eyes, she welcomes it; maybe this is what he smells like now, in this world. It has been a year, after all, but General Chere, who is backed into the corner of her mind in a space so small that she can barely move, knows very well that the smell of blood on the bandana is not old. And she knows that print, that pattern, this fabric, and wonders if now his hair too smells like blood.

Celes's hair has rarely been braided or tied back in any ornamental way. In recent memory, it has been on two occasions: suicide and playacting. She twists her hand in her loose hair and smells the bandana again, arching her back, and the sand gives easily. She twists with strength she didn't know she had, and covers her dirty face with the cloth, searching, searching with her nose.

It's like riding through the wind, through the voices, trying to find where to stop, but she does. And she doesn't know whether it's a memory, or whether she's invented it out of desperation-the smell of Locke's hair. She thinks she finds it, even though she knows that she never knew what it smelled like to begin with, not really.

She makes a sound, and it's the first thing she's said since the last time she spoke to Cid. It's both horrifying and a relief as it comes through her dry and disused throat; it's not made of words, as many of her responses to Locke never have been, and she lives inside of it for just a moment. In here, it's not cold, it's not desolate. In here, she wonders if it's merely a memory, or something that causes cynics like her to panic.

She says his name like she could never say it during encampments or in his presence or anywhere close: _Locke, oh god._ And her hand goes between her legs and her eyes water, as she smooths the bandana over her face, then over her hair, and she wonders what it feels like to wear it. Wonders if that injured bird could have carried it all this way, and for a fanciful second, she thinks that it was carried for her and she resents the thought, even now, even in this world, as the General steps forward and reprimands her. The survival instinct that tells her: _suicide was wise, but now that you've survived, survival is only for the fittest._

She doesn't care any longer as her icy fingers clutch at the warm cloth, and she thinks of him, says his name again and arches against the earth that gives way so easily. She both loves and resents its weakness, and wishes she could be exactly like it. Exactly like the sand, with so much give, even though it is erased again and again by the tide. But in this world, there is no tide; there is nothing to erase her pathetic loose movements as she slides her fingers into herself, under the salty cloth, under the covering as her eyes narrow and she sees nothing but darkness and the colors that Locke last wore.

_Take care of her._ She had thought it was a funny sentiment at the time; now she thinks, _but...he promised to watch over me._ She stops her thoughts up like a bottle, twists a hand in her unbound hair, and fucks herself, all the while singing with the wind: _Locke, please, Locke._

Her fingers twist and she cries out, the name a whisper on her lips, her tongue darting out to taste her fingers after she comes, and in that, she thinks that she can taste him too. She is alive, and she rolls to the side, cradling her link and her memories, and tries to raise her head.


End file.
